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Spark shakes up leadership team and hones in on digital first strategy

Spark New Zealand says in the past two years they have seen a lot come from their new ‘future-oriented’ strategy, and in 2015 are looking to become a leading digital first company.

Simon Moutter, Spark New Zealand managing director, says the company is making a few ‘leadership and strategy execution changes’ in order to achieve this.

He says with these changes Spark will focus on integrating the Turnaround Programme into the businesses to ingrain the performance improvement mind-set.

On top of this, a new strategic programme ‘Digital First’ will be set up over the next few months to hone in on the digital services platform and digital applications intended to fuel market growth, says Moutter.

“In support of these business changes, we will be making a few changes to the Spark New Zealand Leadership Team accountabilities and transitioning smoothly the succession of leadership in our largest trading division,” says Moutter.

Chris Quin will no longer be the CEO of Spark Home, Mobile and Business as he moves on to “attain his next leadership opportunity", says Moutter.

Jason Paris will leave his role as general manager of Spark Home, Mobile and Business to take over Quin’s role as CEO, effective from July 1 2015.

“Rod Snodgrass, CEO of Spark Ventures, will take accountability for the new Digital First Programme in conjunction with his existing accountability for Spark Ventures,” says Moutter.

Finally, Jolie Hodson, chief financial officer, will take on some operational business activities along with her existing CFO accountabilities, he says.

The Skinny and Big Pipe businesses are mature enough to move out of Spark Ventures and will report directly to her from February 1 2015, says Moutter.

“This will maintain high level focus on our multi-brand market strategy at the same time as creating room for Rod to pick up the big Digital First Programme,” he says.

The other leadership team roles remain unchanged.

Since 2013, Spark has focused on becoming a retailer of digital services delivered over their networks and the cloud. Their aim was to stabilise revenue/margin and reduce costs, and drive market revenue/margin growth and improve unit costs.

In this time Moutter says Spark has already made progress in key areas. He says the company has re-focused on New Zealand and developed a customer and multi-brand market approach, and re-branded from Telecom to Spark.

He says Spark invested in fixed and wireless data networks, advanced the IT Re-engineering Programme and implemented the Turnaround Programme, entered cloud IT services and internet TV markets, and launched digital businesses with Spark Ventures.